Not everyone is fooled by slumber-feigning

(by Malinda Seneviratne)

A few days ago approximately 500 ex-LTTE cadres spent five days visiting Colombo, Kalutara and Galle, travelling from Vavuniya by train and bus and stopping in Galle, Matara and Embilipitiya.  Given that almost 70% of LTTE cadres who had surrendered or had been captured have been rehabilitated and reintegrated into society with marketable skills and/or having completed courses of study, this doesn’t come as a surprise.  What made me mention the fact is a comment by a US citizen: ‘Can you imagine a group of hardcore ex Al-Qaeda members who had been ‘rehabilitated’ visiting Washington DC?’   My tongue-in-cheek response was, ‘they do, they do.....and have, have...virtually’.

Washington DC was never anti-terrorism.   It was and is terrorist-friendly. Selectively.  Some might even argue that Terrorism Incorporated is headquarted in Washinton DC or that terrorism is another name for ‘Washington DC’, considering that the name is associated with implemented US policy, stated or otherwise.  On the other hand, even if we believed the glossy version of the world regularly dished out by the more or less kept media, the notion of ex terrorists (bearded and turbaned as per popular caricature) visiting the capital of the USA is impossible to visualize.  This is the difference between that country and this, and perhaps explains certain moves against Sri Lanka from that part of the world, i.e. those generated by righteous entities rather than the self-righteous.  They just can’t believe that things can happen in a different way.  And, if you still believe what outfits such as the BBC dishes out, then consider the fact that they had to apologize for using blatantly fake footage from a demonstration in India claiming it was in Tripoli’s ‘Green Square’ to ‘show’ that the city had fallen.  We’ve had enough reports of Gaddafi’s forces bombing civilians from similar organizations without a shred of evidence.

The point is that even those who are ignorant and/or innocent, unlike the movers and shakers in Washington DC, just can’t imagine a world where things get sorted out outside of the guns-in-booty-out logic.  If wars end, they must, they probably believe, involve mass slaughter (planned and executed) and follow with total humiliation of the defeated.  That’s the history that they’ve read and benefitted from.  I am sympathetic.

There’s no point preaching to the converted.  There’s no point in believing that the truth would help change perceptions that are born out of malice and disseminated as fact even though they are laced with conjecture, wild extrapolation of dubious claims by dubious sources.  One cannot wake up someone who is pretending to sleep, as they say.  Still, it is important to let the sleeping know that it is known that slumber is being feigned.  This is why my thoughts go to visiting US Deputy Secretary of State, Robert Blake, former US Ambassador to Sri Lanka.

The USA recently ‘remembered’ the 9/11 attacks.  It was the 10th anniversary.   Ten years after the attack, there’s a thing called ‘Ground Zero’ and a piece of paper called the ‘Patriotic Act’, draconian and racist.  There’s also the fact that the ‘9/11 Commission’ was arranged to fail; the Chairman, Vice Chairman and Senior Legal Counsel of the body have all disassociated themselves from the report and have charged that their work was deliberately blocked by Washington.  ‘This investigation is compromised,’ one member of the Commission, former Senator Max Cleland said.  Nothing adds up and we don’t need conspiracy theorists to say this, noting also that there are enough Washington-made conspiracies that require far more urgent attention than the 9/11 cover-ups.  ‘Conspiracy’: that’s another possible ‘aka’ for Washington DC, come to think of it.

For all these reasons, when Blake, according to Wikileaks, shows interest in blueprinting Sri Lanka’s post-terrorist future, there’s lots to tell.  ‘Interest’ is diplo-speak, just so we are clear on this.  The man wants investigation into so-called crimes against humanity.  He knows about Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.  He’s feigning sleep after all.  We need to tell him we are aware though.  Here’s some you-are-not-asleep-Blake pills that Blake will not swallow but whose existence the world knows of.

NATO and the Transitional National Council (Libya) gave the people of Sirte ten days to surrender or face a massacre.  Food, water and electricity were cut off and they were subjected to shelling by artillery and British warships and NATO bombing.  This is another ‘October 14, 2004’, i.e. the day when water and electricity were cut off to Falluja, one day before the start of Ramadan, and when the starvation of the population and a 3-week long bombing spree began before the final assault by US Marines killing 3,000-4,000 civilians.  Blake knows Article 14 of the second Protocol to the Geneva Convention.  We know he knows.

An investigation by the New Statesman and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has revealed that NATO wants to formalize the process of handing over prisoners to parties who are known to use torture, a procedure that violates international law, according to Dr. Juan Mendez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.

If Robert Blake actually falls asleep, he might wake up and admit that US troops have summarily executed civilians in their hundreds and that there is evidence (not allegations) that people were handcuffed and shot dead.  He might admit that the man the US claimed to have been Osama bin Laden (captured a few months ago in Pakistan) was summarily executed in gross violation of all norms and laws of civilized military conduct.  He might shut up about Sri Lanka and all the cooked up allegations of misconduct by security forces in the island nation’s struggle to rid itself of the menace of terrorism.

He would frame by preface every statement he makes with the infamous Madeline Albright quote ‘[The USA will] behave with others multilaterally when [it] can and unilaterally as [they] must’ and spare the world and especially Sri Lanka the rank nonsense about democracy, humanity, civilization, conflict-resolution, reconciliation and whatnot that he dishes out regularly.

As for his fascination with ‘devolution’, let him come out and match ‘Tamil grievance’ to devolution-resolution, without fudging the numbers pertaining to demography and evidence regarding historical claims and with due reference to theories of democracy and development. 

Robert Blake is visiting Sri Lanka.  I wish him one thing: good, long, restful slumber.   I doubt he will want to sleep, however.  He may or may not be planning a Libya in Sri Lanka (or a Sri Lankan version of ‘Iran 1953’), and who knows, he might even succeed.  He can count on one thing, though.  Yes, we know he’s feigning sleep.